Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
One of the things that I was kind of holding on to from 'The Daily Show' was there was an exhaustion that I would feel because we just kind of got caught up in the news cycle. You tell a story, and that's an interesting story, and then the next day we have to drop it and talk about something else. That's so unfair to the story and the people.
There's this little box that African-American actors have to work in, in the first place, and I was able to rise above that box. I could have done a bunch of movies where I stayed as the Axel Foley or Reggie Hammond persona. But I didn't want to be doing the same thing all the time. Every now and then, you crash and burn, but that's part of it.
I think all gay guys should get married. I think they should have to get married. They should have to adopt kids because, actually, I'm getting tired of their happy-go-lucky lifestyle. I've had it with them being all happy and in shape. I could look good in denim short shorts and combat boots, too, if I had all day to do leg presses at the gym.
'Baywatch' sucks so bad. I didn't watch it the first time around; I'm sure not going to buy a DVD. But really, you just kind of find out the categories of what's most foolish about these people. With Hasselhoff, it's obviously the huge man-tits with chest hair, probably a lot about his crappy acting, obviously the hamburger video - that's huge.
Years ago, while I was watching a baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Texas Rangers, I remember staring in awe at Cal Ripken. I realized during this game that 'you don't have to be flashy' or have 'power numbers' to be great. It's about the simple things that are the hard things. It's about leadership, work ethic and commitment.
A lot of the things I do deal with my race, but my race is who I am. I'm an American kid who grew up listening to predominantly hip-hop. I will talk about hip-hop as the music I grew up listening to, and I think sometimes people like to put it as, 'Oh, well, he's talking about black things.' And, yeah, they are, but that's my American identity.
I'm not sure I'd classify any topics as off-limits, but I don't look for new territories to offend. There's my joke about when my roommate beat cancer. People talk about cancer survivors like they're warriors, but from where I was sitting, she was just watching television and eating soup. Like, did she go to war? No. She kind of just sat around.
Every woman deals with sexism most every day of their lives. Growing up, it's just in your day-to-day. There are all these preconceived notions of what it means to be a woman or a girl, and straying from those ideas of femininity is sort of shocking to people. I felt angered by that as a kid. I felt like that was unjust. Like that was not right.
When I was studying comedy in Chicago, it wasn't long after 9/11. There were a lot Middle Eastern comedians who were doing bits about hailing cabs and being terrorists. So the first two years, I didn't do any of that because I wanted to separate myself from those guys. But race is a big part of who I am, and it should be a big part of my comedy.
Whatever the joke is has to be funny, and not coming from a mean-spirited place. I think some things are totally off limits. If someone's spouse died, or one of their children, I would never joke about that in a Roast situation. I don't have any aspirations towards writing any cancer jokes, and there's some stuff that I think is definitely taboo.
Comedy is like music - there are genres and styles for every taste. Katy Perry is there for people who like frothy pop music. Metallica is there for people who like head-banging metal. And Susan Boyle is there for... well, I don't who the hell is listening to that freak of nature, but that's not the point. In art, there's something for everybody.
There are certain jokes that indicate how mainstream a comic is. If you're talking about how the side effects of drugs that they advertise on TV are worse than the actual illness they're supposed to prevent, that's like the hackiest joke out there now. If you're still doing that joke, that usually is an indicator of being mainstream, in a bad way.
In keeping with the theme of "I got my hands on," my brother and I would listen to The Diceman Cometh. That was the dirtiest thing we'd ever heard, and we could listen to that at full volume without fear of penalty, because my mom couldn't hear that either. I wasn't a huge comedy fan growing up, but I definitely listened to Andrew Dice Clay a lot.
Abortion is green! I think its irrefutable, but people don't want to hear that. For most people, having children is an instinctual, natural desire and the last thing they want to do is believe that it has any detrimental side, or if they do believe it, they think it's different for them because they live in a gated community or whatever the reason.
Well, if you’re a native Chicagoan, you know how dumb he [Dr. Robert Hartley] is. He gets on the Ravenswood El, he goes past his stop on Sheridan Road, he gets off in Evanston, where the El is on the ground, and then he walks back 55 blocks to his apartment. Now, would you want to have that man as a psychologist? A man who misses his stop every day?
I always say that I love magic but I hate magicians. I like being fooled. If you wave your hands in front of my face and I think you're doing a trick, I'm easily impressed. If you pull a quarter out of my ear, I'm quite certain you're a wizard. But I don't like the way most magicians don't act like they're magical; they act like show business dicks.
I don't think it's unfair to have writers. I think if you're going to do a roast on television, as if you were doing a play or you were reading a script of a movie, you would have the best possible material. And those are the people who score, the people who are willing to listen to the roasting experts and then come out there and own that material.
Out of nowhere she tells me that Oliver Stone - you know, the director - she's like, 'He has this huge Asian fetish, and I find it totally offensive.' And I'm like, 'Why, Kwan? That sounds awesome.' She's like, 'I'm offended because I'm Asian.' And I was just like, 'Well, I'm sorry, but I didn't even notice that. I thought you were just really tired.
Seriously, if you want to get inside the head of a stand-up comic, you could do a lot worse than reading Steve Martin's Born Standing Up, all about how he developed his career and his creativity as a comedian. Lots of what he talks about is relevant to anyone in the creative arts - you find yourself, your voice, your technique and then maybe luck calls.
I'd like to start off this show by asking you all a question, cause I don't know the answer. Uh, I lost my sunglasses and yesterday I went to the Sunglass Hut. Here's the question: Why does a pair of sunglasses cost more than a 25-inch color television set? I go to the Sunglass Hut. I see a pair that I like. I don't love them. I don't. I like 'em. $309.
I realized a long time ago that instead of being jealous you can be inspired and appreciative. It carries more energy to you... That can be an awesome motivating force that can improve your life if you choose to be inspired and not jealous. One (being jealous) has no benefit whatsoever, the other is an incredible resource for creating momentum and improvement.
I gave up accounting. I went in for about six months writing ad copy. I was fired from that, and then another guy and I did a kind of poor man's Bob and Ray kind of syndicated radio show. Then I decided to stick it out and see what happened. I'd give it a year, a year became two years, and then two years became three years, and then along came the record album.
I'm a natural born show off. I love performing, and at school we had a really good music scene and an even better drama scene. When I got to university, I played in bands and did sketch stuff and it was always about coming up with material, which is why I never really practised and have no chops!! When I left uni, I carried on playing and trying out at stand-up.
Let's start with this statistic: You are delicious. Be brave, my sweet. I know you can get lonely. I know you can crave companionship and sex and love so badly that it physically hurts. But I truly believe that the only way you can find out that there's something better out there is to first believe there's something better out there. What other choice is there?
Life has to keep going, so you can either be a victim the rest of your life and let it drag you down into drugs and alcohol and depression or you can turn it into something good, fun even, you know, and I tell young people who are going through depression that this might be the most important time of your life. This might be what makes you a great artist later on.
I always wanted to be a comedian. I loved comedy since I was a little kid, and while I was at university I started doing stand up shows. Once I realized that I was good at it I quit college and left although I had six months left. I went to England. I could have done the last six months but I realized that I was better at standup comedy than I was at singing opera.
The thing that interests me far more than anything is creating music, songwriting and arranging, and in that context drumming itself is a means to an end. I think it's really easy to forget that - I'd sooner play something musical than flash, and as I can't play anything flash, I try to be musical. Drums can set a mood, create an impression, as much as anything else.
At uni I met a lot of people I had nothing in common with. Some were very clever, some very rich, some very sporty. Some of them became my best friends, but not at first. Having things in common isn't always the best start to a friendship. I'd stick with it! Also, try to chat to people when they're on their own. So many people feel they need to perform in big groups.
Once I saw a homeless man wearing his underwear on top of his pants. Now we say, why don't the homeless just go out and get a job? If he's wearing his underwear on top of his pants, I doubt his resume is in order, and I don't think he's going to make it too far in the interview process. In fact, I'm pretty sure that McDonald's has a no underwear over your pant policy.
I'd like the world to know that I would do what I do for no money. If I could trade my comedy for food, I'd walk into a grocery store and give them 15 minutes for $100 worth of groceries. My passion is beyond the financial. I don't think people are aware of that about me. I'm not a flashy guy, and I want people to know that whatever they do is just as important as my craft.
Everything creative is somewhat collaborative. If you're a painter and someone stretches your canvas, it was collaborative on some level. Ultimately I'm the writer for me, but also anytime one of my friends gets stuck with a bit, they can call me and I'm pretty good at helping them get there. I think we all work together on some level, but for the most part, we're on our own.
Any closer would unravel her mystery, the very thing which made her so truly beautiful...It was her mystery that he adored. He was in love with everything that he did not know about her... No real sexual encounter could ever match the secret one that he could nurture in his imagination... No living flesh could ever be the erotic equal of flesh kept private, untouchable and unknowable
Selling your life to sit in a box and work for a machine. An uncaring machine that demands productivity that doesn't understand you and doesn't want to understand you... There's no natural behaviour. Everyone is wearing clothes they don't want to wear. Everybody is showing up and doing something they don't want to do. They have no connection to it. That's the problem with our society.
I definitely had one guy come up to me and ask if I knew where to get DMT. He had a crewcut and he didn't look like he'd ever done a drug in his life. He didn't seem curious he seemed like he wanted to get me to do something. Like "You're the laziest narc ever dude. This is ridiculous. What, do you think I bring drugs around with me? Are you retarded? Why don't you go find gangsters?"
When you start doing comedy, you think to yourself, "I want to be a headliner." And you become a headliner, and you're like, "Oh wait, this isn't what I meant. I meant I want to be a headliner that's famous enough that people come see me specifically." And that's a huge leap, because most of the time most of the audience is there to see comedy in general. They're not there to see you.
There's a very famous Miyamoto Musashi quote. "Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things." The idea is once you understand what excellence is all about, whether it's in painting, or carpentry or martial arts, that you see how that excellence manifests itself in any discipline. I think that all the different things that I do enhance all the other things that I do.
Stammering is different than stuttering. Stutterers have trouble with the letters, while stammerers trip over entire parts of a sentence. We stammerers generally think of ourselves as very bright. My own private theory is that stammerers have so many ideas swirling around their brains at once that they can't get them all out, though I haven't found any scientific evidence to back that up.
When you're jealous, especially of someone else's art or creations you automatically put up these selfish walls that reinforce your stupid ideas. It's hard to pull those walls down and look at what you're hiding. Look at your own weakness and realize that the jealousy came from knowing that you're intimidated by someone else's work, and that when you compare it to your own, you fall short.
It's a weird experience when you're just trying to talk openly about how you think psychedelic drugs and marijuana are beneficial, or a lot of different drugs, especially plant-based ones, can be beneficial. Especially those ones that have some connection to organic life, I feel like you can learn something from them, from mushrooms, from peyote, from marijuana. They can be used as a tool.
I did have a deal for a little while a cigar company that never really materialized that much, except that I ended up with 100 boxes of my own cigars with my signature on them. Which is great, they are wonderful cigars but they never really fulfilled out so now I'm out of it. I can sign up with somebody else or go pick a blend or whatever. I probably will, there is no sense in not doing it.
I'm so in love with my boyfriend right now. Everything is perfect, but we want totally different things in bed. Like, he's always turning the lights on, you know what I'm saying? And I shut them off, and he turns them on, and the other day, he's like, 'Amy, why are you so shy? You know, you have a beautiful body.' I was like, 'Oh my god, you're so cute. You think I don't want you to see me?'
I knew what I wanted to do when I set out. I knew that I wanted to write a book that told the story, obviously. I wanted it be comedy first, because I felt like there already had been childhood druggy stories that were very serious, and I felt that the unique thing here was that I was a comic and I could tell the story with some levity, and I have been laughing at these stories my whole life.
If I were money-motivated, I would spread insidious lies that marijuana is dangerous and addictive and leads to dancing with white women, that your children are at risk of riding that freight train straight into hell or an opium den. Then I'd parlay that fear into a chain of overpriced "rehab" centers that can cure them and shake Satan from their souls. But I am not that ambitious. I am a drunk.
Do you know what Bill Gates has to pull out of an old coat, to feel like I did with a $20 bill? First of all, the idea that Bill Gates has an old coat is preposterous. If he has an old coat, it's the coat Abe Lincoln was shot in and he wears it as a bathrobe - no underwear by the way. He lets his billionaire balls swing willy-nilly beneath the death cloak of the great emancipator. That's your 1%.
I have never been much of a groomer. I take baths a lot, but I don't wear deodorant. I don't have to. I have a miraculous body scent. I've had women smell me and say that should be bottled. I would advise guys to lay off the Drakkar, because the cavemen weren't wearing it. They might have been putting mint leaves on their balls, but your scent is grown naturally. I have really good dating advice.
Seventy-five years. That's how much time you get if you're lucky. Seventy-five years. Seventy-five winters, seventy-five springtimes, seventy-five summers, and seventy-five autumns. When you look at it like that, it's not a lot of time, is it? Don't waste them. Get your head out of the rat race and forget about the superficial things that pre-occupy your existence and get back to what's important now.
White boys always get the Oscar. It's a known fact. Did I ever get a nomination? No! You know why? Cause I hadn't played any of them slave roles, and get my ass whipped. That's how you get the nomination. A black dude who plays a slave that gets his ass whipped gets the nomination, a white guy who plays an idiot gets the Oscar. That's what I need, I need to play a retarded slave, then I'll get the Oscar.
I'd walk into the school, smell that institutional smell of the tomato soup, peanut butter, disinfectant, and boys room. Pass the lunchroom, see the familiar lunchroom lady with the white dress and net on her hair. At the end of 50 years of distinguished service the Board of Education gives her a bronze net - with her name on it. It stems from the Board of Education rule to keep her hair out of the food.
The whole acting and Hollywood [thing], it's just work to me. Stand-up comedy ruins you so badly for doing television. I don't really need to be known anymore than I am. The slight sliver of fame I do have is hard to deal with. If I was actually well-known - I don't even know what to say to people who are at my show when I walk into the venue, much less having waitresses in diners asking for my autograph.
Hip-hop was a big part of my life growing up, especially West Coast gangster rap. The reason I was able to listen to it so freely was that my mom couldn't hear any of it, so we would be driving along just blaring Too $hort's horrible misogynistic stuff, and my mom would just turn to us and say, "This is great. I can feel the bass. It sounds so nice." And we're like, "Yeah, mom. We can feel the bass, too."